


Convalescence

by ackermom



Series: Convalescence [1]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: 1.7k of an au that will never see completion, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, F/M, M/M, Post-Canon, Post-War, eren-centric, so here's what i've got
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-22
Updated: 2018-11-22
Packaged: 2019-08-24 11:15:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16638929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ackermom/pseuds/ackermom
Summary: This city used to stand, before the war. Eren remembers what it looked like. He wonders if the children do.





	Convalescence

**Author's Note:**

> the post-canon au where everyone lives with their scars

It is children, after all, who will end the war. 

Children began the killing, teeth to their hands, and children died in vain, teeth to their hearts. It was children who took swords, against their necks and in their hands, and it was children who either rose up or fell down. 

It was children, in the end, who chose neither. Children chose the path untaken, the road littered with ruble, the way with a light on the other side. It was children who sought peace. It was children who chose Convalescence. 

The war is already over, some say. The war has been over.

The streets of Marley would disagree.

Some, Eren thinks, did not ever know war. Some did not meet war on their doorstep and leave footprints of blood in their wake. Some only heard of war, of the great horror terrorizing a foreign shore. It is these some, this sum, who do not know how to carry on. 

Because war is not blood. War is not guns and swords and battle plans. War is not foreign.

War has seeped into the streets of Marley, one cracked cobblestone at a time. After years and years of quiet fear, war has come to the capital, rearing its ugly head at last. War has not come in great ships as some thought; it has come, instead, in the arms of its vanquishers. War has come to Marley in the hearts of its children. 

They flock to the streets in their squadrons, decked in matching hats and ragged coats with thinning patches at the elbows. They run with their arms spread out, like warplanes. They play bombs and guns, cocking their bruised fingers into rifles, playing dead in the stony grey puddles. They race into line when the bugle calls, snatching shovels and buckets before they descend into the rubble.

It is all rubble these days. This city used to stand, before the war. Eren remembers what it looked like. He wonders if the children do. 

 

 

 

 

 

He does his part. But it will never be enough.

He knows what they think of him. And he knows- they're right. He is the monster he made. He didn't deserve to live at the end of everything, and he never thought that he would. He doesn't know what to do with himself now, how to live in these spaces with the past written across his face. There is no one on these city streets who would not know that face, and it's why, in the first days of Convalescence, he asks Mikasa to cut his hair. 

A shave won't fool anyone, but at least he'll see someone else in the mirror.

"You're sure," she says. Her fingers are braided loosely in his hair, never touching his skin. 

Eren nods. "I'm sure." 

"It's gotten so long," Mikasa says. He can see the scissors in her hand, the light reflected onto the bare wall in a bright glint of silver, and he wishes she would just take a knife to his scalp.

"It's time," he says. 

Her hands falls away.

When she cuts his hair, he can feel her soft silence. Another part of him lost to her, he knows; he is sorry that she has lost so much, that she ever lost one piece of him. But there is no going back, as he has heard so many times since Convalescence began. There is only going forward. 

 

 

 

 

 

It began in the weak hour after battle. Between blood and brick, with swords at their throats, they looked at each other and agreed on something else.

Life will go on, they thought. They should go on with it.

Convalescence began on a white spring morning, with a storm of rain and a hail of pardons. The people searched for someone who spoke with reason, and they found a queen in their midst. Historia ruled something then; now, she rules everything. She was bright, and when she spoke of Convalescence, of forgiveness, of letting time heal their wounds, the people listened.

She led the pardons. Soldiers, warriors, leaders. Offer your hands to this country, she said, and you will be free. Give us your time, your sweat, your compassion. Help us rebuild what we have broken and find what we have lost. No man is empty of blame, and no man shall bear it alone.

And in time, the queen spoke the truth truth. 

In time, they wear the same scars, islands and mainlanders: war in their eyes, blisters on their hands. They rebuild from the ground up. With worn hands, they move rubble and stone and clear the streets to begin again. They pour drinks and break bread and gather chairs. They light bonfires on the beach on cool summer evenings and atone through gentle songs. The melodies carry across the waves, and they are sure the whole world can hear. 

 

 

 

 

 

But time does not heal all wounds.

Eren sleeps in fits between the two people he loves most, the two people who should never have loved him back, and he rises at dawn in a sweat, shaking as he stumbles out of bed and disappears from sight.

He takes to the seaside. The beaches of Marley are white, and he finds himself there, the sunrise shimmering in his eyes, the sand cool beneath his bare feet. In the mornings, he stands alone; the world is silent, for a while, until he hears the calls of children from the seaside streets. He hears their cries, and he turns from the light, his hands trembling as he retreats.

He swore to dedicate his trembling hands to Convalescence-  _hands, hearts_ \- and he does. There is nothing else to do, not anymore. There is nothing but Convalescence.

Convalescence rebuilds. 

The land lies in ruins; not only cities, but farms, seaports, and villages. When the work first began, Eren went to the countryside, where no one would know his face. He thought he might be useful there, working in fast silence. The villagers opened the new year with the hardest task of all: to fill in the craters that crushed their crops and destroyed their lives. He was glad, at first, to break his back over something worthwhile. It was familiar, the kind of work they used to do, when life was simpler, when he could not have imagined what war could do to a world.

The work was good until he recognized the craters for what they were. They were not craters at all. They were the footprints of giants, and Eren returned to the city.

The others are moving forward. They are not whole again, and perhaps they never will be; but they are recovering, regaining a light in their eyes, learning to hold hands without fear of losing the person on the other end. They work throughout the day, and at night, when the streets are quiet, they gather together and say how glad they are to be alive.

Eren sees Convalescence in their eyes, and he knows they do not see it in his.

He has tried. God, has he tried. He works everyday for Convalescence, for peace, for forgiveness, carrying boulders, heaving stones, rebuilding the city, one road at a time. But the pain lingers in his gaze as it grows in his body. It is not just his hands that bleed, but his heart. He doesn't know what he's doing here. He doesn't know why he's still alive, and he's certain that, no matter what they say, they don't know why either. 

 

 

 

 

 

He wishes that Armin would leave him. He wishes he could see.

"You don't have to be afraid," Armin says, kissing away his tears at midnight. "We're here, Eren."

Armin cradles him, loves him, is much too good for him. 

"You should have killed me when you had the chance," Eren will say again in the morning, and Armin will say nothing again, because there is nothing he can say. He will rest his head between Eren's shoulder blades and hold his hands over Eren's heart and stay there until Eren pushes him away again.

He will push Armin away until Mikasa catches his hands. Then it will be her turn, to ease his racing breaths, to hold him though he never stops shaking, to remind him, in her heart, what he has done to the people he loves.

 

 

 

 

 

The children play games on their break, when they nibble at rations and patch their bleeding hands. Eren is their favorite game, but it is not until today that any of them have been brave enough to play. 

"Hey, old man," the girl says. "What was it like?"

He saw her coming from across the way, from where he sits, perched alone on the crumbling ruins of a stone house. But he did not move. He found that he could not. He found the idea of running away from them, their expectant eyes, was much worse than facing whatever dare they had put this poor girl up to.

Up close, he sees that he knows her. Her back has already been broken. Work does not scare her, and neither do titans.

"Don't you know?" Eren asks her.

A light sparks in Gabi's eyes.

For a moment, pain flashes across her face. Up close, he recognizes so much in her. She carries her armor like a sword, a weapon that she brandishes in each breath lest anyone come too close. She lingers for a moment more, staring at him; then she turns and darts away.

He wonders what she will tell the other children.  _What did the titan say_ , they will ask, and he thinks, if he wanted to be truly cruel, he would tell them that she already knows.

 

 

 

 

 

The days are long now, and there is much to do. On the far end of town, where the streets still lie in waste, soldiers stand arm to arm with doctors and teachers; they heave stone into wheelbarrows and cart it away to be pounded down and reformed. To be renewed.

These streets, the ones near the sea, are the cleanest, the clearest, and yet, there's still so much to do. 

But they do it well, the children. They dig up rocks and sweep aside dust and roll boulders with six little hands, covered in sweat and blood and dirt. They break their palms on rubble, and they wipe their tears on rags. They work under the thick, grey sky. Their little heads bob up and down the road as they weave between the largest pieces of stone, the boulders that will be broken down and cleared away.

It is children who clean the streets of Marley, and they do it softly, breaking their skin over someone else's war.


End file.
